Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/189

 use of hyoscyamus and belladonna as agents capable of dilating the pupils, owed its origin to the discovery (by C. Himly, in 1800) of a place in the text (Book XXV., 92) where it is stated that the juice of the plant Anagallis was rubbed into the eyes before the operation for cataract was undertaken.

According to Pliny (Book XXXI., Chapter VI.), the ancients employed mineral waters extensively in the form of baths, and they also occasionally used them as internal remedies. Galen, too, mentions the fact that these waters were in demand in the spring or autumn for purgative purposes.

In Book XXXIX., 8, 3, Pliny—as quoted by Védrènes—makes the following remarks:—

Very few Romans have shown an active interest in medical affairs, and those few speedily found it necessary to pass themselves off as Greeks. For it is a well-known fact that those physicians who, without being able to speak Greek, attempted to build up a practice in Rome, failed to gain the confidence of their patients, even of those who were not at all familiar with that language When one's health is the question at issue the readiness to place confidence in a medical adviser is apt to diminish in proportion as one's knowledge of the man increases. Indeed, medicine is the only art in which one is quite ready at first to put faith in almost anybody who calls himself a physician, and that too, despite the acknowledged fact that in no other circumstances of life is an imposture more fraught with danger.

English versions of Pliny's Natural History and of Pliny the Younger's Letters have been published in what is known as Bohn's Libraries.

Pedanius Dioscorides, a native of Anazarba, a small Greek town near Tarsus in Cilicia, lived about the middle of the first century A. D. (during the reigns of Nero and Vespasian). From his earliest youth he took a great interest in botany, and, after reaching manhood, traveled extensively in the wake of different Roman armies, for the sole purpose of studying by direct observation the plants of different countries and of verifying the medicinal virtues which each one was reputed to possess. In this